Tips, tactics and strategies to help you have a Perfect Workday AND a lighter heart.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Breaking Out of Prison

Sonny is a
guy I know from the gym. He’s on the other side of 70, fit, smart, lighthearted
and one of those guys who, when he’s talking, you should be listening.

Yesterday
we were talking about the new book I’m writing about heartbreak and how to
recover from it. Normally, you think of heartbreak as an emotion linked to
romance…well…at least that’s how I think about it. Sonny, however, connected it
to “how you feel when you lose the friendship and trust you have for someone
because of what they did.”

It seems
that Sonny had a very close friend (“he was married at my house”) whose lies
started to catch up with him. Sonny said, “I had to meet with him and tell him
that while I still liked him we probably couldn’t sit down and joke around and
talk about old times.”

It takes
courage and faith to make a choice like that. I think of folks I’ve known…and
know…who don’t like the confrontation and conflict a choice and discussion like
that would create. So, they’d rather put on a happy face around the person and
then talk about them behind their back after they leave.

I’m not
very good at hiding how I feel and it jumps up and bites me in a variety of ways and variety
of situations. If I have a conflict with you you’ll probably see it on my face
(and no, I don’t play poker) and I don’t have a problem with the conflict part.
However, if you’re willing to talk it out I’m usually more than willing to
explain my side of it and listen to yours. And, if I’m wrong I’ll take my heat and then try to get
over it.

Sonny was a
major exec at a well-known regional corporation. He brought in a speaker for a
conference who was a former pilot and had been shot down in Vietnam and spent 6
years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. Sonny said the guy’s message was, “I might
have been a prisoner of war but a lot of you are prisoners of fear or envy or
anger or some other emotions that keeps you locked up.”

Harboring
ill feelings towards someone and not dealing with them in some sort of positive
way is a type of prison. Revenge, anger and grudges serve no one.

Breaking
out of prison is difficult, but not going in in the first place may be harder.

Contact

Mike Collins is president of The Perfect Workday Company, an information company based in The Research Triangle Region of North Carolina. He presents 100+ programs a year for organizations such as IBM, American Express, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals and The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and Center.